Where to start reading Comics: Part one

Part one: Where not to start.

I've actually been asked this question a few times: "Holy F. Where do I start reading comics?"
And I usually tell them to start with what looks interesting. For starting comics you kind of need to start with characters you like. There are plenty of stories I love but I know that a large number of them aren't for new readers.

For example, everyone loves Watchmen and Kingdom Come to death. They serve very similar functions. They are reflections on what is going on in comics and the direction they are going. They are a comentary, a guide post. And they both tell very interesting stories, but more often than not, without contex, your average reader will walk away not understanding the big difference.

So for reading Watchmen you need to read The Dark Knight Returns and Batman Year One. And yes I realize both are Frank Miller comics, but they are part of the good era. The reason is that Watchmen is a comentary on how dark comics were sinking and how it was becoming a trend. Now this is the easier of the two to get, you see with this you get to read two really good Batman stories followed by Watchmen.
Kingdom Come on the otherhand is the hard story to prepare for. You have to read bad comics. I usually "recomend" a Rob Liefield drawn comic(Pay attention to his proportions, they suck.) and An early spawn comic. In addition I'll throw in a cable story(this may or may not be your Liefeld book). Kingdom Come is all about the prevelance of big muscled, poorly proportioned anti-heroes replacing classic heroes like Superman. Another great example as set up for this is early ninties Venom stories.

Yikes. Two of the most recomended stories in comics and they require six other stories to understand the context of those stories(and a little handholding for someone to explain the book as well).
So honestly this isn't a good place to start.

I'll also hear folks refer to the classic stories. "Oh, you have to read the Dark Phoenix Saga", you absolutely must read "Daredevil:Born Again", "If you like Superman you need to read "The Death of Superman". These aren't great places to start. They are good stories* but they are flawed as first time stories. First off, all three are wrought with continutiy. They don't seem it to current readers, but the problem is that they are artifacts of their time. They feature heroes who might be dead now, or be revamped or changed. And that is all well and good, but it can be confusing if you know them as one thing, and then try and read a modern comic and they aren't at all the same. And with Death of Superman you have to get used to crossover pacing. When I was first getting into comics I started reading a few current titles(Ultimate Spider-Man, Amazing Spider-Man, Civil War and some Civil war tie ins) and a few paperbacks to get caught up on continuity. I'm still not caught up having never read Avengers dissasembled. But i'm getting there. I also was reading back trades of Superman and Green Arrow. So I read and enjoyed Death of Superman, World without superman, and Reign of the Supermen(sometimes called the Return of Superman) and I discovered something interesting. So of the issues were really good(The issues featuring Steel were AWESOME) and some made me groan(The Facist superman wasn't really that interesting, nor was Cyborg superman until later, and Superboy was irritating half the time) but because it kept switching between issues, I justed waited it out and enjoyed the parts of the crossover that I did but read them all and got a cool overall story. But that said the pacing is terrible and can be fairly off putting. But I'll come back to this concept in a future part of this series.
Sometimes a big name can draw you into a character you never knew about. Green Arrow by Kevin Smith and Daredevil by Kevin Smith are really what drew me into comics. Both are filled to the brim with continuity and I kind of ignored that. I just enjoyed the stories. But as I went deeper and deeper I discovered that I really liked the character. When I revisted recently those volumes of Green Arrow that followed(of the two titles, Green Arrow was the one I decided to catch up on and I would just read Daredevil as monthlies) I discovered that overtime I'd come to discover what bad comics looked like, and a handful of those extra green arrow volumes are bad comics.
And I honestly can't tell you how bad of an idea it usually is to start mid-way through an Indie comic. By it's very nature, an indie comic is fueled by it's core audience. It wants to attaract a wider audience but often are too afraid to scare off their core audience and thus aren't always easily accessible, and are almost always impossible to jump into mid-arc. This also isn't a good place to start with mainstream books, but its less of a problem since the big two(DC and Marvel) try and design books with accessibility in mind.

I think I've beaten where not to start to death, so next time I'll properly discuss the best places to start.


*the Death of Superman, as a saga(I.E. Death of, World without a, and Reign of the) works, but there are issues with some serious problems. In additoni the pacing of a crossover can be daunting to a new reader as mentioned above.